


We Are X-Rays Of Something Broken

by opheliahyde



Category: The Borgias (Showtime TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-09 17:37:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14720616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: AU. Set 60’s America, in the wealthy suburbs of New York with Rodrigo Borgia the head of a multi-billion dollar company, his own financial empire he built from the ground up and he’s grooming Cesare to inherit it. Cesare and Lucrezia grow up intertwined like vines, broken and edging towards something they can’t explain.





	We Are X-Rays Of Something Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks and much love to scorpiod for pushing me make this, to write this, and to finish this, even when I thought it was madness and was ready to give up. So basically, this is all her fault. Blame her. Fanmix version posted [over here](http://opheliahyde.livejournal.com/152623.html).

  
_She has you wrapped around her pinky_ , his father laughs, boisterous and loud, and Cesare takes another drink, glancing around the yard and catching Lucrezia’s gaze; she smiles (brief, like a camera flash, just for him) as the string party lights dance around her head, glinting off the shine in her hair. He disagrees silently to himself, thinking it must be the other way around. He’s felt her wrapping herself around him for years (when she was born and they sat him down in a chair and placed her in in his arms, small and delicate and completely fragile, yet with a firm grip in her tiny fingers; when she scraped her knees and came running to him, _only to him_ , with tears in her eyes and blood running down her legs; when she grew up and matched him wit for wit), twining and twisting until he’s suffocating, breathing nothing in but her. She has him pinioned, with her every move and her every glance through the crowd, and if he stares back too long, no one notices.

 

 

Lucrezia lays with her back cushioned by plush carpeting, her legs kicked up and resting against her bed, angled upwards from the floor. She stares up at the ceiling, counting the tiny cracks and fractures that seem invisible to the eye when you’re not paying attention. The record spins on her turntable, filling the empty air with sound. Like this, she can think. Some days she feels like she’s standing on the edge of a precipice, with everything that came before ( _time to put away childish things, Lucrezia, time to let him go_ ) behind her and everything that’s to come stretched out in front of her, the endless unknown. She daydreams, imagines herself grown and married (to someone nice, perhaps; to someone her parents approve of, _an advantageous match_ , most likely) with a little house and a baby to call her own, and tries to see herself happy there. It doesn’t work. The idea sits in her head, flipping over and over like a bad dream, each picture looking more wrong than the one before. She feels like the ceiling, with fissures and tears leaving her damaged in a way that no one ever sees, invisible to all except for those willing to look long and hard.

 

 

Cesare remembers growing up listening to the neighbors gush, his hearing heightened and aware, picking up every nuance in their words. _Your family is so wonderful, so close, if only my children acted like that_. He wonders what they see from their vantage point, outsiders looking in; if they only see the veneer they’ve been trained and taught since they were very young to present to the world ( _appearances are everything_ , Cesare, his father told him, _good business is half presentation_ ), or if they’re hitting on something just under the surface, scratching its way out. He hears his mother’s friends coo over the sound of Lucrezia’s laughter in his ears ( _they’re sweet together, my Bobby and Amy can‘t stand the sight of each other_ ), his fingertips running up and down the sides of her ribs, digging in the empty spaces with their limbs in a tangle on the sofa and it hits him that maybe this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. It’s a fleeting thought, disappearing as quickly as it came when Lucrezia leans in with a grin, her nose brushing against his as she whispers, _look how jealous everyone is of us, Cesare_. He catches the glint in her eye when it makes him laugh, and he cups her cheeks in the palms of his hands and presses a kiss to her forehead, thinking he wouldn’t trade this for anything.

 

 

Lucrezia likes to read over Cesare’s shoulder, chin resting on his collarbone and head pressed against his cheek, likes sound of his breath shifting when she curls up behind him as her arms fold around his back, likes how he pretends not to notice and continues mouthing the words tumbling silently through his head. It’s a game she plays ( _laying her head on his shoulder and intertwining their fingers, bringing them closer and closer to the truth_ ); pushing and pushing until she can get him to push back. She picks out the sundress she wears to their mother’s garden party with him in mind, the white one with scalloped lace around the neckline. She walks through the crowd, taking in the feel of the green grass under her bare feet and sun warm on her arms, and she feels his eyes on her always, lingering heavily and streaking across her skin, leaving trails of heat when he looks away abruptly. He thinks she doesn’t know, but she does, grinning when she feels his gaze drop.

 

 

Lucrezia kisses him first, an accidental collision of lips caused by miscalculating her aim and him turning at the last minute. It strikes the match ( _or was the match already lit and the gasoline poured, the kiss making them drop it once and for all?_ ) when she giggles as he pulls back, their eyes catching as the blaze that threatens to consume them starts. Cesare kisses her the second time, catching her wrist from a darkened corner and he feels like a villain in a fairy story when he pulls her in, hushing her startled noises when he seizes her mouth with his. He shouldn’t be doing this, he shouldn’t, so he releases her and takes a step back, thinking he should leave ( _the house, the city, the state; he doesn’t know, he just knows there should be distance between them_ ). Then Lucrezia frowns and comes nearer, reaching towards him and laying her hand against his neck, saying _no_ , before reeling him back in as he gasps against her lips. And Cesare finds he doesn’t care, can’t bring himself to care about anything but this and he’s not sure he ever really did.

 

 

Cesare lays awake most nights ( _after she’s crept in, quick and silent as a dormouse; after everything, trying to keep quiet, trying to keep secret_ ), listening to Lucrezia breathe beside him ( _small puffs of breath, the gentle rise and fall of her chest_ ), her golden hair fanned across his pillow and her pale legs tangled around his sheets, and thinks. He thinks about so many things ( _hoping they wake up early enough to sneak her out, cursing himself again for letting her insist that she sleep here, letting her convince him that she sleeps better here_ ), how they’re drowning in this thing here between them ( _there’s a name for it, he doesn’t want to call it that_ ) and they’re laughing as the water fills up in their lungs, how there’s no ending to this that he can foresee being happy because he wants, he wants so badly ( _it‘s an obsession bred into him; he doesn‘t recall a time when he wasn‘t yearning, when he wasn‘t fixated on something, maybe that‘s what started all this, it was his natural reaction to make her the center of his universe_ ). But he’s Cesare Borgia and he knows enough by now that he never gets what he wants.

 

 

The party is still in full swing in the house behind them, the sound of music and indecipherable chatter leaking out through the walls and carrying over to where they lay on their backs in the middle off the backyard. Lucrezia likes it here, the summer’s day heat fading off and giving way to a cool breeze, the night sky above their heads with the stars sprinkled across it, shining bright with Cesare beside her, near enough to touch with their fingers intertwined.

“I hope we never have parties like this,” she tells him, turning her head to look at him in profile. “They fill up the house to the point where it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Our house will always be a home.”

Cesare laughs and lifts her hand to kiss. “Never ever, my love,” he says, but she watches his face, the way it pinches up as the words come out and feels like he’s only placating her.

She doesn’t understand him sometimes ( _hates that in moments like this that she can’t, hates that there’s still this one barrier she can’t make it over, no matter how hard she tries, some part that will be his and his alone_ ), the way he can be here with her, but million miles away at the same time, lost to his dark thoughts that don’t make sense.

“Because we’ll have each other and that’s all we’ll ever need,” she professes, watching and waiting for when his expression turns ( _and it does, it always does, just like it never stops feeling like a stab of betrayal to her heart_ ).

 

 

They take drives into the city whenever they can, parking and getting lost in the maze of streets and labyrinthine alleyways, feeling small standing under the shadow of giant skyscrapers. To Cesare, these tiny excursions feel like an escape, he feels free to be himself ( _and sometimes he wonders why he doesn’t keep driving, he’s got everything he needs in the passenger seat beside him, just keep driving until they find a place where no one knows their names and they can feel like this forever_ ). He links his arm through Lucrezia’s, leaning into each other as they walk in a way they can never do for fear someone taking it the ( _right_ ) wrong way, he can kiss her in the daylight in the middle of the sidewalk if he wants to, without the fear of getting caught hanging over their heads, he can laugh with her without the feeling of their mother’s eyes lingering too long and hard ( _like she sees, like she knows_ ). He takes her out to dinner and takes her to her favorite show, and it feels normal and right and he doesn’t know when that happened, or even how it _could_. But it always ends ( _it has to, they can’t stay in OZ forever, they don’t belong there_ ) and he drives back, thinking ( _always_ ) how he should take the wrong turn, the one that doesn’t lead home, just to see where they end up, just to see if they can stay lost for a little while longer.

 

 

It gets harder and harder to be at home. Their father sends Cesare out on business trips with regular frequency now, meeting partners and potential buyers, learning the ropes and becoming more indoctrinated into the company and Lucrezia hates it ( _she’s stuck at home with Mama constantly chattering about this man or that boy, hoping to garner her interest when all her focus is on the clock, time ticking away in this sort of limbo until Cesare comes back_ ). And when he’s home, they have to watch themselves and Lucrezia grows tired of walking on eggshells, constantly aware that one wrong touch or glance could send everything crashing down around their heads ( _but some things can’t be helped, like when their fingers twine on accident when they stand next to each other, the way they lean towards each other when they sit close; little brushes here and there that happen unconsciously, touching out of habit_ ).

They sit next to each other at dinner with their ankles folded around the other under the table as their father reiterates what Mama had said while they were gone ( _he pretties it up a bit, spinning words like thread, making everything sound much better than it actually is; Lucrezia knows there’s a reason her papa is a better salesman than Mama_ ). Juan laughs as he speaks. “With all due respect Father, but the only man Lucrezia will ever choose is Cesare,” he says, still chuckling, but Lucrezia can see the way he fixes Cesare with a stare.

Cesare lowers his fork and stares back, sharp and hawk-like and Lucrezia watches as he bristles at the edges. Their father choking on his wine cuts through the tension of their locked stares and they all listen as he laughs between gasps of breath. “Too true, my son,” he says, wiping his mouth. And that should be the end of it, but the tension never fully dissipates, still hanging in air, thick and cloying. Cesare and Juan spend the rest of the meal shooting each other glances and Mama doesn’t eat at all. Lucrezia can feel the heaviness of her eyes lingering over her as she cleans her plate.

After dinner, Cesare pulls her aside, touching a finger to her lips before she has a chance to speak. "We have to get out," he says.

 

 

It starts to rain as they pack, fat and heavy droplets falling on the house in the dead of night. Lucrezia watches them roll down her window, breaking up the heavy blackness of the world outside, sparkling in the weakest shafts of moonlight as she writes the note they’re going to leave. Cesare knocks softly on her doorframe as she finishes, walking in when she looks at him and pick up her suitcase off the bed. They smile at each other as Lucrezia lays the note on her bed, propped up by her pillows and then head out into the storm. They can’t stop touching in the car because it’s been days without, because they _can_ here in the car with the dark unknown stretched out in front of them. Lucrezia kisses Cesare’s fingers as he drives, curling against his side and tucking her head under his chin. When they arrive, the city greets them warmly, welcomes them back like an old friend.

 

 

They don’t turn on the lights when they reach the hotel suite, stumbling into darkness, finding their footing when lightening cuts through the sky. Cesare spins Lucrezia around and presses her back against the door, shutting it closed as he kisses her, desperate and wanton, his fingers flicking open the buttons of her jacket ( _he wonders if this will ever stop, this obsession pushing their mutual addiction ever on_ ). They shed their clothes like layers of themselves, bits of pieces of cloth that build up the masks they wear, and become more of who they are as they move further in the room, never breaking their kiss and never not touching, leaving no area unexplored.

Cesare picks her up and puts her on the desk as she giggles into his neck, thighs sliding over his hips as she pulls him in with arms around his back, fingertips finding a home in the grooves of his spine as she tilts her chin upwards and kisses him again. They fit together like they belong, broken in the same way ( _he imagines what they must look like to the outside, two dark shapes moving together from up high, who the world thinks they are; he considers what she‘d look like against the glass, the cityscape from behind and rain falling all around her_ ).

Cesare watches Lucrezia’s face as she tightens around him, the way her eyes shine in the darkness, the way her expression shifts when the lightening flashes, catching the moment in its brightness before it fades, her nails digging into his skin as she gasps and Cesare doesn't know when he began to live for this.

 

 

“We could go anywhere, you know,” Lucrezia says, lifting her head and resting her chin on his sternum. “Just pick a place and go and be like this forever.”

Cesare brushes a lock of her hair away from her face, running his thumb down her cheekbone. “And where would you have us go, my love?”

She grins and scoots closer, kissing the edge of his jaw. “Somewhere far, far away, somewhere we can live happily ever after.”

He wraps his arms tighter around her, forcing a smile, just for her, only for her. “That sounds nice.” Nice like this day, warm and safe and together in this bed; nice like a dream, but eventually they’re going to have to wake up and face reality.

Lucrezia’s grin broadens, the look in her eyes growing bolder and more mischievous and it pulls him apart and puts him back together ( _wrong or right, she’s the glue that makes it fit_ ) as she yanks the covers up over their heads and tugs him down into her makeshift fort. “We’re already there,” she says. “Let’s stay.”

And they do, for a little while longer.

 

 

They check out holding hands, holding tight and counting down the minutes until they have to let go again. Lucrezia wants to walk around a while, draw out their time here, but Cesare thinks they’ve been gone too long. _Three days_ , Lucrezia thinks, _not long enough_. Cesare glances sidelong at her, the corner of his mouth curling upwards, then he descends, kissing her temple in an attempt to wipe the sour look off her face.

“We’ll be back, I promise,” he whispers in her ear. She smiles, just a little bit before catching his mouth with hers.

“I’m holding you to that,” she says, letting him go.

Lucrezia looks around the busy street, trying to commit everything to memory, something to pull out later and remember this day as she’s leaving it. She accidentally locks eyes with someone across the street, then her expression turns to match his: wide-eyed and stutter-shocked. She has to look away when she moves past her field of vision and casts her gaze downwards, watching her feet as she takes her steps.

Lucrezia is shaking when she’s finally seated in the car and it stops Cesare in his tracks, moving to kneel beside her on the sidewalk. “What’s the matter?” he asks.

The words don’t come easy, but they come. “I think I’ve just seen Juan.”

 

 

It all falls apart.

Everything.

Cesare wonders if this is what a crumbling kingdom looks like.

Their father goes into damage control mode when Juan leaks it to the press ( _pissed and hurt and scared; Cesare is good at damaging his siblings_ ) and doesn’t stop to think, he doesn’t stop to feel. Their mother can’t look at them, locks herself up in her room for days ( _he wants to knock and see if she’s alright, but he’s afraid of how she’ll look when she finally meets him face to face_ ). And Lucrezia stares everyone down like she’s spoiling for a fight, daring anyone to say a word with her eyes, sharp and severe. ( _He wonders: did he create this? Did he mold her into this beautiful, fearsome, ruined shape before she had a chance to mold herself, all because he loved her far much more than he ever should have?_ )

They’re going to paint him as a monster ( _and maybe that’s what he is, maybe that’s what he deserves_ ) and try him for his sins, only so he can come back out changed and redeemed; cured of this sickness inside him, _fixed_. It’s a story they can sell, a lie they can spin, but Lucrezia refuses to play the victim.

Lucrezia cries ( _for the first time since everything happened, she cries_ ) when he feels the steel clamp around his wrists; he breathes out, a shuddering sound coming from his lips ( _he's lost everything, what's his freedom?_ ). He watches her as they tug him away, not fighting, not really; thinking maybe he should have done this himself a long time ago ( _stepped away from her before it was too late, stopped this before it happened, but he doesn't think he was built to be that strong_ ).

They pull him out of the house and he loses sight of Lucrezia, the door shutting between them.

Then he hears a crash and she screams.

He closes his eyes.

 

 

Lucrezia comes to see him.

Cesare blinks awake when she sits outside his cell, rubbing his eyes as he stretches off the cot; he looks terrible and it makes Lucrezia want to scream. “How did you get out?” he asks, his voice heavy and sleep-rough. “How did you get in here?”

She levels him with a stare. “Don’t ask.” And he doesn’t. “They’re sending me away,” she says, scooting her chair closer, wincing at the sound it makes against the linoleum. “I won’t testify, so they’re sending me away to an asylum to get psychologically evaluated. Our father’s brilliant new scheme to save the family name.”

“It’s not just our name, Crezia… it’s everything: our reputation, our connections, the company-”

“You know I don’t give a damn about the company,” she says, low and harsh, spitting the words out like poison.

His mouth curls into a smile. “I know,” he says. “Did you come here to say goodbye?”

She scoffs, her gut twisting at the _idea_ , turning her insides to knots. “Hardly,” she says, watching his smile broaden, shooting pains through her heart. “What do I do, Chezza? I need to know what I should do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Lucrezia knows what she wants, but she needs him to want to want it, too. “You know,” she says. “You _know_.”

He sighs, but doesn’t look surprised. “I have accounts, personal accounts our father doesn’t know about. Do you have paper and a pen?”

She pulls a small notepad and pen from her purse and writes down the information he gives her. “You are very well-prepared, brother,” she says, lifting her head as she returns the pad to her purse, grinning at him.

“Always.”

"Okay." Lucrezia stands up and starts for the door, but turns back around to face him. "I want you to know it was worth it, what we did, _us_. Even if you don't think so now, it was worth it. And I want you to know, I'll be waiting." She closes her eyes as she finishes and steps out of the room, not wanting to see his face, not wanting to know his reaction, preferring to make it up in her mind because then she can control it and only see what she wants to see.

She leaves the station and starts walking, finding herself in the middle of the road when she comes to the point where she can take a turn and go home, or keep on going.

She goes straight, letting her feet carry her away.

 

 

Cesare wanders for years after he’s let out ( _early, the case practically thrown out when Lucrezia all but vanishes in the night_ ), not sure what to do or where to go. He can’t go back to the company, he’s a black mark on their pristine record ( _as far as the public knows, but Cesare knows better_ ) and his father wouldn’t allow it, though it pained him ( _Cesare often wonders if that’s what pains his father the most, that he ruined everything he built for him_ ). From what he heard, Juan took over his position and is doing much better than expected ( _it stings, just a little, even when it shouldn’t_ ).

His mother writes to him sometimes, leaving letters in the various PO boxes he rents out all over the country. He picks them up when he can, reading them out of order and putting them in the glove box when he’s done. He never writes back, he can’t find the words.

He knows where Lucrezia is, he’s known forever ( _she left him clues, a trail of breadcrumbs that lead straight to her_ ). He spends his time circling around her, never stepping within her radius ( _too scared he won’t step back out again, too scared his feet will carry him back to her and they’ll start this all over again, too scared he’ll find out that’s all he wants--it is_ ).

He waits. And he waits. He marks off his calendar, counting the days, watching time pass him by and he waits. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for; for him to stop wanting or for her to move on ( _he knows she won’t, she’s had a firm grip on him since the day she was born_ ), so he waits and bides his time until he can make a choice.

Cesare wakes up one day and realizes it’s been seven years and he can’t believe he’s gone that long without seeing his sister’s face ( _time doesn’t feel real, especially when you’ve made your entire existence a waiting room_ ).

He gets up and gets dressed and starts walking. Cesare doesn’t know what he’s doing when he steps into the space he’s marked forbidden, ignoring the warning signs in his head as he keeps going.

She works in a bookshop ( _he’s known the name of it for five years, the address for four_ ) and she’s working today. He sits down on the park bench across the street, watching her through the store window. Her hair is shorter, resting just above her shoulders ( _still white-gold, still perfect_ ) and she looks older, not by much, just something more mature around the corners of her eyes. She smiles and laughs with customers and he’s hit with a wave of _missing her_ , burning through his chest and aching in his gut.

She’s still Lucrezia and he’s still an idiot.

He spends the day there on the park bench across the street, can’t will himself to move ( _towards her or away; he can’t make up his mind_ ) and he wonders if this is how it ends; him left frozen on this park bench, stuck forever in between.

As the sun sets, someone sits down beside him, the wood creaking underneath him as they settle. “Today’s my birthday, you know,” Lucrezia says.

“I know,” he says, and Cesare turns to look at her, a smile creeping up on his face ( _the muscles rusty and seldom used, but they work as he stretches them_ ).

She always did meet him halfway.


End file.
